In a period of global uncertainty marked by social fragmentation and emotional fatigue, art education offers vital spaces for attentiveness, care, and shared meaning-making. This presentation explores art education as a relational and ethical practice through which healing and empathy may emerge, without reducing artistic activity to instrumental or therapeutic ends.

Drawing on qualitative, practice-based research across primary, secondary, and teacher-education contexts in the United Kingdom, the study uses practitioner observation, reflective documentation, learner dialogue, and close reading of visual and collaborative artefacts. There is a focus on visual practices including drawing for meaning, collaborative making, installation, and structured reflection, examining how Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) can be meaningfully embedded within art education.

These practices cultivate empathy by slowing attention, encouraging care for materials and others, and creating spaces where ambiguity, emotion, and difference can be held. Resonating with East Asian educational values of attentiveness, relational harmony, and ethical learning, the presentation positions art education as a humane, reflective pedagogy that supports resilience, social responsibility, and civic engagement through sustained, mindful practice.

In arts education, museum experiences often bring strong inspiration and emotional impact. However, these experiences often stay personal and do not easily become practical teaching actions. When teachers return to their classrooms, the feeling gradually fades under the pressure of time, curriculum, and daily practice. This leads to an essential question: how can meaningful, affective experiences in museums be kept and turned into learning designs?

This presentation is based on two teacher workshops developed in collaboration with museums in Taiwan. One took place at the Paul Chiang Art Center (2025), and the other at the National Museum of History (2026). Both focus on teachers’ learning processes and explore how subjective experience can move toward teaching design.

At the Paul Chiang Art Center, the workshop begins with sensory and site-based experience.  The architecture and exhibition spaces, Paul Chiang’s artworks, and the natural environment of Taitung create a rich field for perception. Teachers engage with sound, light, space, and materials, and reconnect with their senses. Through shared reflection and dialogue, they are invited to pause their usual teaching mindsets and reconnect with their senses. These moments of "being moved" serve as the essential starting point for developing deep learning designs.

In contrast, the workshop at the National Museum of History is based on a public art project titled “Thinking History.” Unlike traditional museum artifacts, these works invite touch, interaction, and close engagement. The workshop therefore emphasizes two aspects: interaction with the artworks, and reflection along a historical timeline that reconnects participants with their own personal narratives. Through this process, participants begin to see how their personal histories intersect with broader historical contexts, generating new understanding and resonance.

These two approaches reveal a shared process. It begins with encounter, moves through reflection and meaning-making, and then develops into learning design, before returning to teaching practice. The key is not the experience itself, but how it is transformed.

This presentation also suggests that meaningful learning design should begin with the "WHY" (core belief/emotion) before moving to the "HOW" (teaching strategies) and the "WHAT" (learning outcomes). By utilizing tools such as The Golden Circle and Instructional Scaffolding, abstract feelings are crystallized into practical teaching prototypes. In this process, teachers move from receiving experiences to actively designing learning.

When meaningful experiences are preserved and integrated into teaching, museums become more than places to visit. They become starting points for teacher-led innovation. Through the ongoing movement between museums and teaching contexts, arts teaching becomes a dynamic process that connects experience, meaning, and practice.